Following are the obligatory pictures from the cat family, just to get a scent of kindness and humaneness (catness).

I photographed the cats thousands of times during the last years and selecting pictures for the blog from this enormous archive is an incredible difficult task, much more difficult than writing the blog texts!

This time it was a bit easier because all the pictures have to be about Princess Min Ki. She once again proved, that she is the rightful and unchallenged leader of the family, when she chased away an intruding foreign tomcat and for the last few days slept on the patio, ready to repel any further attempts of this cat to mark our place as his territory.

Last night at four o clock I heard cats screaming. I jumped out of the bed and ran down from my upstairs bedroom to help her. I found her sitting eye to eye with the foreign cat which ran away when I appeared at the scene. She had a light scratch on the nose but nothing serious.

Princess Min Ki is now seven years old and at the top of her game. Of humble origin and growing up on a farm she decided after one year that farm life was not right for her and that a nearby cat family (which happened to be hosted by me) would be better suited for her. My cat friends initially tried to chase her away just as she is chasing away now the intruding tom cat, but she was persistent and careful enough to slowly and gradually getting acquainted with them.

She slept outside the house in the garden for two weeks and she followed us at a distance, when we made our daily walks. The distance became less and less and suddenly she was part of the pack, and the day after that she was in the house, eating with the other cats, resting and sleeping beside them, not making any noise and not bothering anybody.

She has a superb social instinct, probably developed and honed in her first month of life as she grew up among the farm cats. These farm cats are in fact feral cat colonies who are accepted by the farmers because they are useful to eliminate mice and rats. The farmers provide neither food nor veterinarian care and the farm cats usually die after four or five years from infectious diseases or parasites. Princess Min Ki’s children and her siblings are probably long dead now.

I called her Princess because after I let her spay she was not a queen anymore. She has forgiven me this severe and life changing mutilation and seems to be rather glad that she doesn’t have to raise kittens twice a year.

The mentioned superb social instinct enabled her to raise in the ranks step by step, finally and inevitably becoming the head of the family after the untimely dead of Harry (which was another remarkable cat, I truly miss him).

Paul challenged her, but as he was not liked by the other cats (not even by his sister Rosy)he left and moved to another place. Same with Ma Xi, who hopefully has found now a responsible new host. I liked both and I’m sad about losing them but there was no other possibility, they didn’t fit into the family anymore. Nobody forced them to go, not even Princess Min Ki, who never had a fight with them (or with any other family member). They both went by themselves.

I love and respect all my cat friends, they are multifaceted, interesting, distinct personalities with strengths and weaknesses, special admirable talents, and amusing idiosyncrasies, but I really and truly respect and appreciate the Princess. She is not only my friend, she is my pal, she is my buddy, my associate, my aid in the same way as Harry was it.